Seagate is boasting to be the first company ever to ship two billion hard drives and counting as of Tuesday.

For reference, the Cupertino, Calif.-based hardware company shipped its first hard drive in 1980. Seagate hit one billion hard drives shipped in 2008.

Seagate is attributing the incredible turnaround of another billion drives in just five years to the "explosive demand" for HD video, data-intensive applications, and e-commerce.

Richard Doherty, research director of the tech consulting firm Envisioneering Group, was quoted as noting that households consuming one terabyte of data per month now are expected to generate 20 times that by 2015.

John Rydning, IDC’s research vice president for hard drives and semiconductors, was also cited in the announcement, asserting that the cloud as well as mobile devices are actually major drivers for the boost in hard drive shipments.

He addet that HDD shipments are expected to topple 585 million units worldwide this year.

Despite a constant battle with Western Digital for the top spot in the industry, Seagate predicted that "three billion may not be that far away either." Last year's acquisition of European rival LaCie will surely help push the U.S. hard drive giant toward its goal.